Civil society group Article 13 has criticised the Irfaan Ali-led administration for its failure to constitute several constitutional bodies, including the Public Procurement Commission (PPC), which has not been functioning for just over a year and it has signaled its readiness to take legal action to ensure the rule of law.
In a statement, Article 13 said that while President Ali’s commitment to addressing the issue of the Constitutional Commissions once he returns from ongoing COP26 summit, is welcome, it is far from satisfactory.
“Without assigning a tier of importance to constitutional and statutory bodies, the failure by President Ali to establish the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) and the Public Procurement Commission Tribunal (PPCT), even as his Government expends or announces the expending of billions of dollars of public funds, can no longer be tolerated.
Under the Constitution, the PPC is legally charged to monitor public procurement and the procedure therefore in order to ensure that the procurement of goods, services and execution of works are conducted in a fair, equitable, transparent competitive and cost-effective manner according to law and such policy guidelines as may be determined by the National Assembly.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is responsible for the nomination of the five members to the PPC and then taking it to the National Assembly for the bipartisan support of no less than two-thirds of the 65 members. After approval, the appointments are made by the President.
Guyana’s last PPC expired in October last year and since then the PAC has sent out invites for nominations. Current PAC Chair, Jermaine Figueira, last month, told Stabroek News that APNU+AFC members have made their nominations and are waiting on the government to submit its nominees. Government’s PAC representative Juan Edghill had indicated that their names are ready and will be put forward once the National Assembly was reconvened. The parliamentary recess ended in the second week of October but there has been no sitting since.
Article 13, in its statement, also noted that the Public Procurement Commission Tribunal Act requires the appointment of a three-person Tribunal to hear appeals of any decision made by the Public Procurement Commission. This has also not been done.
According to existing legislation, the president, in accordance with the advice of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) and Public Service Commission (PSC), is required to appoint the Chair of the Tribunal and the two members. Both the JSC and PSC are also yet to be reconstituted, with the former not being in place since 2017.
“To add insult to injury, the Ali Administration, in violation of the Constitution and the PPC Act, gets its Cabinet to issue a farcical and fictitious “no objection” to a Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) Agreement for the Amaila Falls Hydropower Project (AFHP), secretly negotiated by its own Government.
“That the Ali Administration does not know or pretends not to know, that the Procurement Act permits an objection by the Cabinet only if it determines that a procuring entity has failed to comply with applicable procurement procedures is frightening for the country’s governance and for the public purse, and poses a real and grave threat to the rule of law,” the statement said.
The group said the breaches indicate a “reckless disregard for the Constitution and the laws of the country, which were put together to prevent corruption and autocratic actions and to promote transparency and accountability in public finance. Unless the situation is rectified, the group said it will take necessary action, legal and otherwise, to ensure constitutionality and the rule of law.
